Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: angela, Comics, dc, entertainment, image, jla, marvel, neil gaiman, todd mcfarlane, x-men

The Love Checks Of Todd McFarlane And When Neil Gaiman Was Choosing Between Angela/X-Men And Angela/JLA

Published Sun, 01 Jun 2014 10:00:24 -0500

by Rich Johnston

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Today's it's all about Neil Gaiman's past.

Gosh Comics in London will, in July, be launching their ex-employee Hayley Campbell's The Art Of Neil Gaiman.

In Hayley's own words the book is "about Neil Gaiman and all the stuff he's done. I interviewed him for a week in Scotland. I lived in his attic for a week in Wisconsin. It's taken four years to turn into a book with pages but it's here." and the publishers, Ilex Press, describe the book as " Utterly comprehensive, lavishly illustrated, The Art of Neil Gaiman is the fully authorised account of the life and work of one of the greatest storytellers of all time." We've had a sneak peek, and we can confirm that the book is a must have for any Gaiman fan. Hayley's unparalleled access has turned up some archival gems, and some great stories straight from the man himself.

The launch will take place on Friday, the 11th of July, between 7pm-9pm. We'll be celebrating with the usual beers and bubbly and can't think of a better way to kick off the weekend. Hayley will be on hand sign copies of the book and to answer any questions you might have about eyebrow pencils, cycling, and possibly even Neil Gaiman. As always if you'd like us to have a copy signed for you send us an email at info@goshlondon.com.

Pages from the book at the end of this article. Also, we must thank Daniel Best again for his archivist ways, this time publishing in full for the first time, Neil Gaiman's deposition from 2002 in the case against Todd McFarlane and Image Comics oer payment/ownership issues regarding royalties and the ownership of Angela, Miracleman and more. Gaiman wiuld come out of this owning Angela in full, transferring any rights to Miracleman over to Gaiman, and a payment of over a million dollars.

Gaiman sold Angela to Marvel Comics and Marvel would then consolidate the rights to publish Miracleman, unopposed. Here are a few extracts of note but really the whole thing needs reading with a large glass of red wine and some nibbles.

You stated that you spent three years, approximately three years working as a counsellor with the Church of Scientology, is that right?

A: Yes.
Q: Were you a member of the Church of Scientology at that time?
A: Yes, at the time.
Q: Are you still a member of the Church of Scientology?
A: I don't consider myself as such.

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Q: Did you sign a contract with, was it Fleetway Publishing?
A: Yes, it was a back-of-the-check contract at the time.
Q: And did that back-of-the-check contract state that you were granting all rights in the work you were turning in to Fleetway Publishing?
A: I no longer remember.
Q: How do you know that they were taking all rights?
A: Because they never paid anything else for use.
Q: Were you finished with that?
A: I am now.
Q: Did you ever complain about that to Fleetway?
A: I spoke to Steve MacManus, the editor, who said that was how they did it and they would love to change it, but it wasn't changed. And that was the last thing I did for 2000 A.D.

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when Image started, they were getting a lot of stick from fans and from the comics press for being illiterate garbage, which is probably a polite way of putting the things they were saying about the comics, chiefly those written by Rob Liefeld. And Todd had phoned me up and asked me if I would write one. He said what he wanted to do was go to the four best, biggest and most important writers in comics and get a guest issue written by each of them to show people that an Image comic could be well written and to show his, I don't think he used the word humility, it's not a word that Todd would use, but that was what was being communicated, that hey, I can learn, that kind of thing.

Q: And that he wasn't already too big to realize that other people could help out as to the quality of his creation, is that right?
A: Yes. And I also think he considered it the ultimate marketing gimmick to have good writing. He said at one point to me during this that Liefeld and co. were putting foil-embossed stamped covers on things and rolling out new number ones in order to get the numbers. And he had four issues of good writers and that was his gimmick.

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Q: Had you ever received a $10,000 advance for one issue of a comic book before?
A: If memory serves, I had received more than that for Black Orchid, which was a three-issue series that I had done for DC in 1988. As a novelist, I was used to receiving, I received significantly more than that. As for a one-shot story, it was significantly more than I had received for one comic. Having said that, I had not written at the time, nor had I had any interest in writing comics that would have sold in the numbers that Spawn was. And also, we were in the middle, actually that was – we weren't even in the middle, that was the high point of — you can actually go back and look at the graph. That was the high point of what was called the speculator boom. So it was — that payment would have been very comparable to anything coming out then as a number one or with a foil-embossed cover or anything. Comics were selling 750,000 to 1.5 million copies. These days 100,000 is incredibly good. These days 40,000 is really good.

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A: When — as a writer of comics, I would get the DC Comics, they send you everything they publish that month, and I saw Infinity, Inc. which was drawn by Todd, and later I remember somebody coming up to me in the DC offices showing me Spiderman number 1, which Todd drew and which people thought was very funny because the writing demonstrated that the person writing it had never written anything before. Other than that, I knew nothing about him.

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A: Well, I said to them what is the — do we have a royalty deal on this. Up until that point the only the way that things seemed to work was one would get these checks and they would say here is a check for $800 because Todd thinks you are a good guy. And I actually saw in the press at one point an interview with Todd where he was saying no, we don't do royalties, we just send people love checks and they are better than any royalties could ever be. So I didn't trust the love checks and I went out to Phoenix. I talked to Todd. I do remember talking to him. I have no recollection of what the substance of the conversations were in '95.

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Q: And do you see that that is a character equity agreement that the first paragraph lists a series of characters who have appeared in various Sandman issues, do you see that?
A: Yes, I do.
Q: Take a moment to look at the characters .that are listed there. I think they are in all capital letters.
A: Yup.
Q: Okay. Now, if you would look at the first paragraph of Exhibit 58.
A: Yup.
Q: And take a look at the characters that are listed in capital letters in Exhibit 58.
A: Yup.
Q: Do those appear to be the same characters?
A: Nope. I had one removed.
Q: Which one is removed?
A: I removed Destiny, who was a pre-existing character who I didn't feel that I had changed, and they said that I had revised the pre-existing character, of which I had.
And Destiny, and I just felt the character of Destiny, I had left him the same. I mean, I had given him a house. I didn't feel that was revising a pre-existing character enough to actually warrant my going in there and saying, you know, I would like a share of this character. So I had them remove that. That was actually them offering something that I was perfectly happy to take away.
Q: Other than that change taking Destiny out as one of the characters, do the other characters appear to be the same?
A: They do.
Q: So for the characters of Dream, also known as Sandman, and the characters of Death, Desire, Despair, Unity Kincaid, which all first appeared in Sandman number 10, Delirium, which appeared first in Sandman number 21, and Destruction first appearing in the Sandman special, is it fair to say that Exhibit 58 represents your executed agreement regarding character equity in those characters in Sandman?

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Q: What was the Randy Bowen design Angela statue?
A: Randy Bowen is the top guy in comics when it comes to doing statuettes, high end things you can put on, you know, the corners of tables and so forth, not toys, $150 porcelain kind of things. And he approached me at some point in the nineties and said he would really, really like to do an Angela toy, an Angela statue and, you know, he thought it will be cool and that obviously I would make some money out of it. And I said that was a lovely idea and to contact Todd. And as far as I know he never heard back from Todd.
Q: So how did that prevent you from — how did Todd prevent you from benefiting from a Randy Bowen design Angela statue?
A: If Todd had given his approval on it, he would have gone into, you know, Randy would have made it without Todd's approval without any communication from Todd.
Q: Did Randy need Todd's approval in your opinion to make this statue?
MR ARNTSEN: Object to the extent it calls for a legal conclusion.
Q: As far as you understood, you told Randy Bowen to go talk to Todd. Why did you do that?
A: It seemed polite.

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Q: Well, let me stop you. I think you did say, and let me just make sure, you stated that in the 1997 agreement, because Todd had said there were no royalties to give you based on the sharing of the characters with Image Comics, that he would make that up to you by allowing you to do a one-off with Angela and a one-off with Medieval Spawn, is that correct?
A: Yes.
Q: And that in fact, in breach of that 1997 agreement, according to your allegations here, he did not let you do that, is that right?
A: What happened was I spoke to people at Marvel Comics and at DC Comics about doing these comics. They were very enthusiastic at the time. And when they phoned Todd, nobody would put them through to him and he didn't return calls.
Q: Did you hear from anyone at DC Comics or Marvel that Todd specifically said that you could not do a one-off with DC or Marvel?
A: What I heard was that Todd would not return calls.

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I mean, you know, DC had given me, at one point, for basically simply including this old character Destiny of theirs, which is this bloke who wandered around with a book and a hood and spoke gnomically, and I just basically said there are these seven people and here is one of them. And they offered me three-quarters of what I would have got for one of the, for a character that I had created simply by virtue of him being, you know, basically me writing him. And I thought well, a character that I created derived from something of Todd's 50 percent seems fair.

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A: I knew that it wasn't — well, okay, if you define not complete as not everything that Todd had, I didn't know what Todd had. It wasn't the complete set of Miracleman film, but a phone call from Terry Fitzgerald either when he sent it off or when I got it saying that some of the film had been illicitly sold under the counter by the former owner of Eclipse to some guy in Toronto who was trying to hold Todd up for it and they didn't have that stuff.

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Then 1995, late 1994, early 1995, the Angela toys are out. I remember being incredibly proud when they made the cover of USA Today as the most inappropriate toy of the year, according to the American Family Association. And I would hear from Todd that they were selling incredibly well and that they were incredibly popular, cool, the Angela toys. And I thought great, I will get a royalty on these. Nothing ever happened, no payment ever came in. I would ring Todd's people and say "Is there a payment," and they would go "Oh, yeah, yeah, don't worry about it, we are not businessmen here." Todd would say that a lot, that he wasn't a businessman, he was a creator and you just had to bear with a certain amount of disorganization and his funny way of doing things. So I waited. Never saw any royalty.

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I was a little uncomfortable at that point with the fact that they had just done these Angela, Glory or Medieval Spawn, Witchblade crossover things or in the process of doing them. And I was saying well, do I get a royalty on these. And Todd was saying "I don't know how to give you a royalty, because the way it works at Image is Image is all one big family and I don't get a royalty, I just say to the guys go ahead, you can use my character and if I at some point want, I can use one of theirs." So the idea of this big Image publishing family, he was saying no money was actually coming back to him for Medieval Spawn, Witchblade and Angela, Glory, so I couldn't — so he couldn't give me a share. So he would have to figure out a way to do something like that which wouldn't necessarily be financial.

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And then in the summer I remember talking to the people from DC and from Marvel Comics and saying great, I'm going to do these comics, do these one shots, are you interested, do you want to do them. And I think I was looking at trying to decide between doing an Angela Justice League of America and an Angela X-Men at Marvel and probably doing a Medieval Spawn Batman, because I had an idea for something that would work for that. And I mentioned it to these people and then I would ring them up later and say what's happening and they would say Todd is just not calling us back, we wouldn't be put through to him, which I thought was a bit odd.

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And from happier days…